Amino resins have long been used to impart desirable characteristics to fabrics. Resin addition to textiles generally modifies the "hand" of the treated material as judged by qualities such as resiliency or firmness. Moreover, color retention and other fabric properties may be improved or protected by amino resin treatment of textiles. Generally, these improvements result from the addition of 0.5 to 10 add-on weight percent amino resin to a textile.
Amino resins are typically formed as the reaction product of amine compounds with formaldehyde. A shortcoming of these resins is that they tend to emit formaldehyde during manufacture, use, and subsequent storage. For example, a strong odor of formaldehyde may be evidenced upon opening a roll of amino resin treated fabric stored under conditions of heat and humidity.
It is, therefore, desirable to develop alternative textile finishing agents that have acceptable properties of "hand", but also minimize formaldehyde emission.
It is an object of this invention to prepare amino resin containing compositions and composition treated textiles which have improved "hand" and/or reduced potential for formaldehyde release.